Merchandise Captures The Staples Rock Craze

ORLEANS – Visitors to Staples can now “rock” apparel showcasing the store’s namesake attraction.

 Staples Rock has become a viral sensation since being unearthed and placed outside of the store in Orleans Marketplace on Route 6A. Now the store is selling T-shirts, bags, hats, coloring pages and other swag to capitalize on the local phenomenon.

 The items are housed in the Staples “gift shop,” a central display on the sales floor. The shirts show the store and the famed rock with the inscription “I Visited Scenic Staples Rock.”

 Wyatt Fournier, a supervisor at the store, said the merchandise is exclusive to the Orleans location. And if you’re interested, he said you should act quickly while limited supplies last.

 “For shirts, I think we’re going to get more shirts, because those are pretty popular,” he said. “But everything else I think is going to be a one-time kind of thing.”

 The rock was taken out of the ground while sewer work was being done in the plaza this spring. Faced with the choice of either demolishing the rock or preserving it, the plaza’s owner, Cape Cod Brokerage, opted to take it out of the ground and preserve it as a landscape piece.

 The presence of the rock outside of the store soon afterward went viral, as visitors took photos with the mass and others posted photoshopped images of the rock at other places around town, including the South Orleans rotary. 

 On the strength of the rock’s popularity on social media, Staples management came up with the idea of selling merchandise.

"We never expected the Staples Rock to become a local landmark — but when we saw how much joy and attention it was generating, we knew we had to lean in,” Jay Peek, Staples’ senior vice president of services, said in an email. “The merch is our way of celebrating a moment that organically connected our brand to the community in a totally unexpected, fun way." 

 Fournier credited the uniqueness of the rock and its surprise placement outside the store with generating buzz around the igneous sensation.

“It was kind of just out of the blue,” he said. “It wasn’t like ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool’ or anything planned. It just kind of happened.” 

The rock merchandise was introduced at the store last week, and Fournier said products have so far been selling well. The question is whether the rock’s popularity will endure.

“It is helping,” he said of how the rock’s popularity is impacting business. “But it could just be a temporary thing. I’m feeling like this is a little burst, and then it’s going to start to die off a little bit. But then people are going to say ‘Oh my God, this rock is still here,’ and then it might pop off again once the tourists are back.”